Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX AS 2.1 Installation Manual page 48

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3.12.3 Partition Fields
Above the partition hierarchy are labels which present information about the partitions you are creat-
ing. The labels are defined as follows:
• : This field displays the partition's device name.
Device
• : This field shows the sector on your hard drive where the partition begins.
Start
• End : This field shows the sector on your hard drive where the partition ends.
• : This field shows the partition's size (in MB).
Size
• : This field shows the partition's type (for example, ext2, ext3, or vfat).
Type
•
Mount Point
exists; the volume is "mounted" at this location. This field indicates where the partition will be
mounted. If a partition exists, but is not set, then you need to define its mount point. Double-click
on the partition or click the
• : This field shows if the partition being created will be formatted.
Format
3.12.4 Recommended Partitioning Scheme
Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following partitions:
• A swap partition (at least 32 MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In other
words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the data your
system is processing. The size of your swap partition should be equal to twice your computer's
RAM, or 32 MB, whichever amount is larger, but no more than 2048 MB (or 2 GB). In Disk Druid,
the partition field for swap should look similar to the following:
<Swap>
For example, if you have 1 GB of RAM or less, your swap partition should be at least equal to the
amount of RAM on your system, up to two times the RAM. For more than 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB
of swap is recommended. Creating a large swap space partition will be especially helpful if you
plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
• A /boot partition (50 MB) — the partition mounted on /boot contains the operating system
kernel (which allows your system to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS), along with files used
during the bootstrap process. Due to the limitations of most PC BIOSes, creating a small partition
to hold these files is a good idea. For most users, a 50 MB boot partition is sufficient. In Disk
Druid, the partition field for /boot should look similar to:
/boot
: A mount point is the location within the directory hierarchy at which a volume
button.
Edit
hda6 64M 64M
hda1 50M 50M
Chapter 3:Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS
Linux swap
Linux native